Between Sheets
by Shizune-hime
Summary: Time and distance may have separated them, but for one morning - one moment - they forget everything else. Post-ACC; figure out the setting. :  Songfic. FINISHED!


**A/N: **_So I was inspired yet again, by one of the lovely Imogen Heap's songs, and dedicated this to a really good friend of mine, and she means the world to me. This is for you, my dear buddy Katie - my mind reader. I love you! :D *SNUGGLES* And this is also for all the Zerith fans out there. Happy reading!_

**"Between Sheets"**

_**...You and me, between the sheets...**_

_**It just doesn't get better than this.**_

... ... They were Artemis and Apollo, Paris and Helen, Cupid and Psyche, Odysseus and Penelope, in their own little world - like the many tales of lovers heard and read about over the centuries, they had their own history together and they were inseparable.

Now in the stillness, for the first time after seas and unread letters had parted them, they lay together.

It was the previous night's ritual of love sent and the soft glow of morning, that captivated a heart woken by the sunlight and rendered it asunder in happiness. There were no words to describe the quickening beat that lived in her chest this one morning, because words simply weren't enough.

Longing for warmth she curled up next to him, though awake, quietly admiring every inch of his being - perfect or distorted. Acceptance was a fragile thing, she understood, and yet with him it seemed unbreakable. Soft tears fell from her eyes, the witnesses of his love's blooming, just as the flowers she took care of bloomed in the spring.

Her eyes closed. Her mind, trying to divert her deepest thoughts, brought up memories of the hours before - the way they twisted and turned, the way rapture came to guide them over time and distance, the way they tangled themselves and washed each other over with love and unspoken understanding, the way they made up for lost time to prove every spoken rumor wrong - they all replayed in her mind, and it joyed her that now, their hearts were one.

_**The many windswept yellow stickies of my mind,**_

_**Are the molten emotional front line...**_

But through the beauty she discovered in his soul's perfection, there was pain - and she tried to harness the pain for the many years that seemed too long of a voyage, even for one who knew the secrets of life and the world. She understood that even if she tried, no newfound discovery of the day, or even ancient texts from her own biological history could cover the one fact of her own stance in his life, even if it happened for just a few years - yet it made an indelible mark in her: that she had been left in the sidelines - in a world she found claustrophobic, under the plate - while he discovered comfort and the beauty of life, the beauty of friendship that seemed like lifetime companionship even for just a while. All this, and his other experiences happened, as she was set aside. That she had been left in the dark, waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel to shine and she was left trapped, left to lie in wait until life's pulse itself had to whisper to her its secrets and new visitor.

Nothing could compare to the pain she felt that day, she could remember.

The smooth terraces of his skin were delicately touched by fingertips that flew over, light as feathers, as if to trace labyrinths and spelunk into places that she, pretending, had never never been able to explore. And on her face the delicate crevice lined by soft lips - that were kissed countless times the night before and now slightly parted - instead pursed together to keep herself from laughing if ever the anatomy next to her own shivered or showed a sign of unbearable weakness to the way she explored. And she traced on his arm, and still traced, as if she were drawing on air, and quietly marveled as the smoothed adonis next to her lay curled up, breathing slowly and quietly.

Now her eyes focused and her digits stopped their light treading, and she watched him sleep, wondering what went through his mind as their souls weaved together in the ritual. A certain sadness threaded through her, all so suddenly, and she tried to banish the thought with a smile as hard as she could. The back of one of her gentle hands now wiped over her eyes, and she quietly sniffed to hold back the tears that wanted to come out like a flood. She didn't want him to see her like this, for she knew, that above everything, one thing she couldn't share with him was her pain - he didn't deserve that. And both knew that it was something that he didn't want to see as well.

... But ten minutes into her continued staring, the other half of her heart had already woken up. He waited as he kept his eyes closed, wanting to feel her light touches again so he could catch her hands and give the kisses they deserved, but nothing came. So quietly he listened, wondering if she had been speaking sweet nothings into his ear, or if she had been kissing his skin softly that he never felt a thing - he wanted to feel them now - but still, nothing. He felt that either something was wrong, or she was simply watching him as he slept.

She shuffled against the sheets. And instinctively, he wrapped an arm to pull her closer to him slowly, and opened his eyes.

They blinked their eyes clear. No words were said for now, only soft smiles were exchanged.

It was a moment in time that he thought was divine - a moment that surpassed even the many letters she had sent him but never got to read, the many times he visited her, that one date, his order for Tseng to look after her, the very first phone call she made to reach him. It was a moment in time that leveled the very first time his eyes caught sight of her. And like that same day, on _this_ day, the soft light of morning on their skin felt as if Heaven had opened up to him.

Curled up and facing each other, the couple stared off - emerald into sapphire and vice versa.

Every second he breathed as he was lying next to her was a gem. The many beats that he felt pulsing within him - racing - were as much as the many years they were apart, and he had never felt more complete. The moment defined the end of their meeting, the peak of the mountain of Love that they had tried to climb for as long as they could.

She never said a word, only lifting a hand to trace lines along his back, and he sighed as he caressed her arm. The many thoughts that they tried to convey to each other in silence suddenly disappeared, only leaving touches to do the talking. And nothing more joyed the two, than the instantaneous understanding they tried to communicate to each other.

_**Oh, and the morning on the your skin and loved up light,**_

_**Tracing patterns in the maze of your back...**_

And a tear fell from his eye, as he smiled, and she kissed his tears away, wanting him to feel her presence more than ever. He understood, and he loved it, and he felt it more than anything - the simplicity of her being right next to him was incomparable to the many unread letters, the many attempts to be together and share their lives.

_**Softly, softly the goose bumps like that**_

_**And then a kiss...**_

And again, they twisted, tangled, and turned, lost in a dance that only they could comprehend.

_**Maybe another,**_

_**And another one.**_


End file.
